| Laura the Lion | |
|---|---|
 Renaissance painting of Laura with the head of Bishop Gilles of Ravenna, c. 1523 | |
| Duchess of Ferrara | |
| Reign | 27 February 1068 - 26 January 1090 |
| Predecessor | Corrado II of Ferrara |
| Successor | King Aleramo I of Hungary |
| Born | 18 August 1038 |
| Died | 26 January 1090 |
| Spouses | |
| Issue | Alisia Supponidi King Aleramo I of Hungary Giorgioi Supponidi |
| House | Supponidi |
| Father | Duke Corrado II of Ferrara |
| Mother | Princess Kyra Lekapenos |
Laura of Ferrara (18 August 1038 - 26 January 1090), also known as Laura the Lion, was Duchess of Ferrara and Verona from 1068 until her death. The third daughter of Duke Corrado II of Ferrara and Princess Kyra Lekapenos of the Byzantine Empire, Laura ascended to the throne after the unexpected deaths of her two elder, teenaged sisters. In fact, of the six children born to Corrado II, only Laura and her sister Bruhilde survived until adulthood. Many contemporaneous writers attributed these deaths to supernatural occurrences due to Laura's later reputation of murder and cannibalism. Married matrilineally to the bastard son of the King of Hungary, Laura supported her husband in the War of Hungarian Succession which saw him crowned King of Hungary. When he died in 1078, her young son Aleramo was crowned king.
Cruel, arbitrary, and dull, Laura was only widely lauded for her abilities on the battlefield. During the Succession Crisis of Count Umberto of Ravenna, a distant cousin, Laura dueled two bishops and both times slew her opponent and her battlefield leadership led to a crushing of the revolt. Her reign also saw the land scourged by the Black Death, which greatly impacted the duchies. While sequestered in her castle in Ferrara, it was widely rumored that she cannibalized her court to survive; however, her cannibalism was not known widely until after defeating another succession crisis, when she ate the claimant. In an attempt to reign in his apparently insane vassal, King Ulrich II of Italy attempted to revoke Laura's claim to Ferrara, which Laura contested. With her military skill, the rebel forces held the strong upper hand; however, while campaigning in Verona, Laura became ill with what is widely suspected as Typhoid. Though successfully treated, the surgery left Laura weak. She never recovered and died in the Parma in 1090. On her death bed, she passed the Duchies onto her first son, Aleramo I of Hungary, which was only possible because she was ostracized from the court of Italy.
Early Life
editBorn the third daughter of the Duke of Verona, Laura was widely considered a somewhat dull child with streaks of cruelty; however, the insanity that would mark her adult years was not yet present. Being the third child and a girl at that, it was unlikely that she would ascend to the throne and so, she was allowed to develop as she willed it. This all changed however with the growth of her younger sister, Brunhilde. Brunhilde was smart, ambitious and ruthless, even from a young age. Some of her behaviors concerned her devout father, who worked with the court bishop to ensure that Brunhilde was not some devil spawn. The bishop assured him that she was not.
The first death occurred on 7 January 1047, when Alessandra, the eldest daughter was found dead in her bed with no obvious cause for the death. While heartbreaking, this was not entirely unusual and, so, she was buried and life went on as usual. Four years later, the second daughter, Giovanna, fell asleep and awoke insane before succumbing a few days. Losing his two eldest daughters, in addition to another son and daughter who dies as infants, pushed Corrado to monitor his two remaining daughters closely. The change in Laura from a cruel if sane child to madness seemed to have occurred after, on two separate occasions, she woke up screaming, insisting that something had been trying to kill her in her sleep. No evidence of this was found but Laura was convinced it was her younger sister Brunhilde, which precipitated a lifelong rivalry between the two.